10 Famous Unsolved Mysteries Easily Explained by Science
The world is full of mysteries, and the human race loves nothing better than to find answers to them. Frequently, though, the answers aren't as popular as the mysteries themselves, and people will just continue right on believing, even when the evidence is right there, why don't you just look?! Just look, you bastard!
#10.
Cattle Mutilation
The Mystery
There have been numerous reports of cattle mutilation -- that is, unexplainably dead cows turning up with odd wounds that look to be surgically precise. Their bodies have been split open, and the soft organs inside have been removed. Their eyes, tongues, genitals and anuses may also have been removed. But the most unusual element of all, and the thing that really sets off the Crazy Alarms in people's heads, is that the bodies are always mysteriously drained of blood.
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Although the phrase "missing genitals" would drain our blood, too.
Clearly, it's vampires. Or else aliens are doing it to study the cows. Maybe satanic cults are committing ritualistic sacrifices. No, wait: It's unseen monsters like El Chupacabra that are feasting on the livestock!
Well, something is happening, goddamn it.
The Solution
In the 1970s, the ATF and even the FBI investigated the cattle-mutilation phenomenon. Their results? They found no evidence of anything other than natural causes and the occasional psychopath. No cult activity, no aliens, no monsters.
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No missing sisters, no cigarette-smoking men, no hot redheads. Working in the FBI is surprisingly dull.
Natural causes that appear as surgical wounds? What about the removed organs? How is that possible? In most cases, scavengers such as foxes, buzzards and other critters that like beef au natural saunter by the decomposing corpse and have a bite or two -- thus the organ removal.
The surgical look comes later, when insects chew at the edges of the wounds. See, flies like soft foods, because flies don't have teeth. Same reason we go to Taco Bell: no standards and less work. And also much like Taco Bell, they prefer the softer parts of the animal: eyes, tongues, genitals, anuses and the rough edges of those aforementioned scavenger wounds. Also, if the animal's been lying around for long enough (or even short periods in the hot sun), it'll bloat and burst open, often with very clean, surgical-looking tears. And then come the maggots, which eat anything they can get their little teeth on.
Via The Telegraph
We just knew you needed to see this again.
They'll chew up whatever's left of those organs and drink the animal's blood, which typically pools to the bottom of the corpse, giving it that nice, cleanly drained look. Look, don't believe us (we certainly don't make a habit out of it), but what better way to demonstrate than a little field experiment? In 1979, an Arkansas sheriff named Herb Marshall got a bunch of complaints about cattle mutilation in his jurisdiction. So he got the idea to take a dead cow, plop it down in a field and film it for 48 hours in what was undoubtedly the worst two-day stakeout since Another 48 Hrs. After the elements and various creatures were done with it, the stakeout cow was indistinguishable from any other animal that had been "mutilated."
Or Nick Nolte's career.
#9.
The Nazca Lines of Peru
The Mystery
The Nazca Lines of Peru were discovered in the 1930s, which, coincidentally enough, was right around the time people started flying planes high enough to see them. Much like the time we tried to confess our love to Cindy Lansmoore in 10-foot-high flaming letters on her lawn, ancient man, too, had a thing for crazy imagery that could only be seen from above. The Nazca Lines are large geoglyphs made of shallow lines dug into the earth, revealing the white ground beneath the red rocks that normally cover the area. Some are as large as 900 feet across, and the entire canvas area is about 190 square miles total, or slightly larger than the city of New Orleans.
Via lucdgbxl
Why, yes, that is a 100-foot-man waving at you.
So how did ancient, technologically deprived people build these things accurately, when we could spot them only after we successfully harnessed the power of flight? Some people believe they were either built by or were landing strips intended for visitors from another world. Author Jim Woodman thinks they might have been created by way of rudimentary hot air balloons that could give their passengers a larger view of the landscape. The pilot would direct the artists down below -- presumably by yelling really loudly (unless they also built rudimentary walkie-talkies).
Via theboywiththethorninhisside
"I SAID LEFT, YOU BASTARDS! LE- OH, VERY FUNNY -- I HOPE THAT'S A SECOND TAIL OR YOU'RE FIRED."
The Solution
Woodman actually went out of his way to make a functioning balloon from the materials the Nazca people would have had, and while that's incredibly awesome, there's no evidence that the Nazca had even the vaguest concept of balloons.
Via nott.com
Still, if they did, this would make an awesome ancient South American birthday party.
But there were wooden stakes in the ground that have been carbon-dated to the time of the Nazca, and some researchers speculate that the Nazca may have simply drawn long ropes between the stakes to create the Nazca Lines. Dr. Joe Nickell of the University of Kentucky decided to make some Nazca Lines of his very own, using only methods and equipment the Nazca would have had handy. So three men and an 11-year-old kid set out to make a giant bird in a landfill, and in only a few hours, they did just that.
No aliens -- just a bunch of sweaty dudes who dig birds.
Via Joe Nickell
Literally.
#8.
Klerksdorp Spheres
The Mystery
Klerksdorp spheres, winners of the fiercely competitive "least sexy name in geology" award, are small, rounded, disc-shaped rocks found in a single mine in South Africa. They're described as being perfectly concentric, hard as steel and balanced to a degree that not even NASA can calculate. In fact, NASA has allegedly said that they could only have been constructed in a zero-gravity environment. Also, they've been carbon-dated as being nearly 3 billion years old. Speculation about their creators ranges from an ancient but unspeakably advanced ancestor of humanity to aliens to the followers of the Mighty Klerksdorp, He Who Devours.
Via Wikipedia
Made from the remains of his victims, presumably.
The Solution
We should start by saying that they're not perfectly round: Many are disc-shaped, and they're often intergrown with other stones. They're not as hard as steel, either. Steel's hardness varies depending on alloy, and Klerksdorp spheres are by no means unnaturally hard (tee hee!). They rate about 4 or 5 on the Mohs scale, which is only about halfway up the chart, far below steel's 6 or 7. Also, NASA has never examined them: That's Internet bullshit tacked onto the original information. That's what the Internet does -- you get a free bonus prize of Stupid Lies with every box of Delicious Facts.
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"Can be eaten as part of a healthy lifestyle. Massively unsuitable for children."
However, the fact that they're 3 billion years old is true. Klerksdorp spheres are actually the product of a completely natural process known as concretion. Basically, they're just plain old sedimentary rocks that happen to look cool. Don't thank aliens -- thank good old Mother Nature.
Do it.
For the love of God, do it, or she'll sic Australia on you.
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Ta-da!
#7.
Ball Lightning
The Mystery
Ball lightning is kind of like regular lightning, only in convenient travel-ready ball shape. People have been seeing the stuff since the 17th century. There's even some speculation that UFOs are actually misidentified ball lightning. The phenomenon is frequently described as traveling through solid matter, like walls, and has actually killed people. But what is it? Is it just regular lightning with a childlike sense of play? Did God lose his bouncy ball? Is it the disembodied, roving testicle of Thor? It's totally that last one, isn't it?
Via AstronomySquared
Photos that show the phenomenon in action certainly have the same picture quality as ancient porn anyway.
The Solution
In 2007, Brazilian scientists discovered that passing large amounts of electricity through a silicon wafer creates a vapor that, once cool, condenses into an aerosol that glows when recombining with oxygen. The result is tiny balls of electricity that "move erratically about the lab, rolling around on the floor, bouncing off objects, and burning whatever they touch."
Via ttyler1999
The only scenario imaginable where it's kind of badass to wear sandals.
You can watch a video of it right here. Those scientists now think that ball lightning occurs when regular lightning strikes ground rich in quartz, or silica (like you find in sand). Other scientists have agreed with the Brazilian group's findings, including John Abrahamson of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, who said, "Their balls are of sufficient duration and size to enter the mainstream ... seen in nature." Immediately followed by "What? What did I say? What's so funny? Guys?"
#6.
Mystery Spots
The Mystery
Mystery spots are little roadside joints you'll find dotting all of America's interstate system. The most famous is the creatively named The Mystery Spot near Santa Cruz, Calif. For a modest entrance fee, you can personally experience a variety of odd phenomena: Water runs up an incline, people stand on the walls, balls roll uphill, and to put it technically, your shit just goes all bananas everywhere.
Via Richard Masoner
Water running up, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together ... mass hysteria!
The owners of The Mystery Spot describe it as a "gravitational anomaly." They speculate that this is probably the result of "cones of metal that were secretly brought here and buried in our earth as guidance systems for [alien] spacecraft." And your bananas-going shit is probably too busy with its own problems to argue with them.
The Solution
If you hadn't noticed from the pictures, everything looks a bit tilted in these places. That's because it is. In fact, it's even more tilted than it looks.
Via Seth Mazow
Scene from Inception 2: Lil' Inceptioneers
Once you're inside, you're unable to establish any kind of horizon or to orient yourself properly, so you have no real way of telling that mystery spot buildings can be tilted by as much as 20 degrees. Berkeley scientists wanted to know just how much the tilt and lack of proper perspective messes with your perception, and they discovered that just looking into a tilted room can dramatically distort your vision. If you're in the room and your body is also tilted, the effect is doubled or even tripled. Things that look like level fields are not, and you even have trouble distinguishing uphill from downhill. So when you're watching a spout of water appear to flow up an inclined pipe, you think you're seeing this:
But you're really seeing this:
And when you think you're seeing this:
You're really seeing this:
All via sandlotscience
There's nothing inherently mysterious about the spot; somebody just built an exceptionally shitty house and charged you to look at it.
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We have more interesting DIY accidents every weekend.
They totally messed up with the "mystery spot" explanation as I have seen many images, that I'm sure other could also locate, of levels being used at mystery spots and showing themselves as level while the people in the image are as much as 45 degrees lilted to it! Other images use plumb-bobs or the surface of water or even just several people standing around a mystery spot room that you could not possibly run a single plane of "down" under all their feet. Admittedly some "mystery spots" are just funhouse construction or sitting badly on a hill, but some aren't.
ReplyWhat a bunch of bullcrap. LOL
ReplyThat "explanation" for cattle mutilations is really crappy writing.
ReplyWhat do we know? What does science prove? Don't you know crazy crazy s**t goes down here? Of course you know. You're just being weak.
Really? I'll more interested in why they made the nazca lines, I can't remember when but I remembered there were stakes to help build such lines, told in a show. Yet there's hardly any important explanation as to why. Oh wait, science don't to that sometimes - like life aint it?
Replyof course it glosses right over the fact that of course making lines on the ground that makes a picture for someone in the air is easy...if you know that someone is flying up there and have some way of figuring out what your image would look like from far above, calculations that require knowing what the ground of a flat plain looks like from high in the air. So...how the hell did they calculate what it would look like and who the hell were they making it for? Those are the questions that make it a mystery not how did they make a picture, they drew lines. We knew they drew lines...just not why and how they knew what they would look like from the sky.
I just want to point out that in the cases of mutilated animals, I'm sure some, if not most of the time, yeah it's probably natural causes that make the animals look like they've been drained and surgically cut up. The problem with this though is that many of these cases the farmers actually care about their animals, and they will be absolutely fine the night before, then a few hours later, this is what they end up looking like. That is just strange. Also, in some of these cases, the animals have what look like vampire marks on their necks or other parts of their bodies. I don't think there are a bunch of vampires runing around drinking cows blood, ut something is definitely strange, and not all of these cases can just be chalked up to natural death and decomposition.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesAlso I wanted to say, that picture of a maggot is probably the most horrifying thing I've ever seen, and I was pretty horrified by those things before. But I just wanted to add to my comment above, I said something strange is going on...I don't know if these things are supernatural of not, I just wanted to point out that there are a LOT of things on this planet, and outside of it, that science does not have an explanation for, at least not yet. years ago people called scientists crazy for thinking the Earth revolved around the sun, so maybe we should stop insulting people for believing there is more to life than what we can see right now. But also, the cattle mutilatins, I said something strange is going on in some of the cases, that's not to say that people aren't doing things like this on purpose to get other people to believe in the paranormal. People are strange, and weirder things have been done.
You're trying to appeal to rational, you'll fail because some people are just too close minded. Some people mark off alien believers to be morons or lunatics - their brain can't accept anything else except what they believe is truth(like religious people, eh?)
i see what you're saying, but it doesn't hold up. this explanation explains 99% of every "mutilation" and that 1% is more likely to be human error or blatant lying ( for insurance purposes, not wanting to seem neglectful, etc) than aliens or vampires.
Personally,I'd consider it an honor to be fataly electrocuted by Thor's testicle.
ReplyI think he had, like, 8 or something. So there's bound to be a few strays floating around.
An interesting add-on to the "Mystery Spot" entry that may require more research: I live in California, so I know plenty of folks with San Diego Mystery Spot bumper-stickers and whatnot, and several of them have told me of another phenomenon (I'm not sure if it's part of the Mystery Spot or just near it) in the area. There is a hill, not obscured by trees or anything, totally out in the open, that things roll up. Balls, coins, even cars in neutral roll up this thing. What's the deal with that?
ReplyIt's an optical illusion. Same idea as the mystery spot. You have a sloped road that angles VERY slightly downhill. The terrain surrounding it is deceptive and when you look at it, it appears to be uphill but is not. Go out there with a bubble level and drop it on the road, I promise it will show you it's actually a down slope.
There's a place here in Florida called "Spook Hill" where you can drive your car to, put it in neutral, and roll "up" the hill. As Sharrrp said, its an optical illusion, the hill is really a down hill slope, but the bottom of the hill turns more downward so that the change point looks like you are looking up towards the top of a hill, with the surrounding landscape reinforcing this perception.
Nazca lines:
ReplyWhat about the mountain tops?
You completely overlooked the fact that the lines go through some mountains, the tops of which have just disappeared!
if you're going to debunk the lines...You'll have to look at the missing mountain tops and explain how they did that, and where the tops went. They're just missing from the area altogether (a feat that the Nazca people couldn't have done, or shouldn't have been able to do).
Do not believe the guy on the "History" Channel with the ridiculous hair. C'mon man. If that guy wasn't on your TV would you believe or trust a f*****g thing that man says? No you wouldn't even let him pet your dog. So please don't let him explain things science may still be trying to understand by claiming some really bored aliens came here to do a bunch of useless stuff.
While some of these have full explanations (swamp gas for will o wisps) some are clearly also science half-assing it (ghosts are just this electric current - fails to explain why only some places and why the same details and why only some people).
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesThe Nazca lines is a case in point of stupidity. Sure we can recreate them now and yes, they would have built them by hand back then. What the explanation completely fails to offer is *why* they would have done it as well as offer any proof at all that those stakes were there for that reason. Science - it only works when it is done right.
And not used by atheists who worship their white lab coat gods.
Right, because it's a coincidence that the aliens who created them left the stakes behind at the edges of figures - right where people would put them if they were marking where to dig?
Obviously science can't answer why - until it builds a time machine. "How" is what is explained here, and pretty clearly.
right, because science is here to tell you why things happen.
Science: explaining the reason for life once again. oh wai-
The thing they fail to explain is the missing mountain tops! The nazca lines go through some mountainous areas, and DIRECTLY through some mountains....
However they didn't just dig a tunnel, the mountain tops of just completely disappeared.
This needs to be explained by science as well if the Nazca lines are to be 'debunked.'
An earlier article ("The Creepy Scientific Explanation Behind Ghost Sightings") gives a bunch of reasons for why ghosts sightings occur in particular locations - the writer referred to it in the article, and offered another reason that it doesn't discuss.
As to why someone would make the Nazca lines, I just feel like mentioning that "Because it's awesome!" is not a recent invention.
Tray, Falcon NEVER said anything about aliens being the ones who did it, so why even mention aliens? They clearly said, yes that's how the people did it. They were saying WHY did they do it.
and again i have to comment because lets face it some of these werent even misteries the red tide has been known for years and the ghost phenominon again lazy scientist with lazy half assed science paranormal activity while some can be written off as mental conditions, or electromagnetic interfenece thats maybe 40% if that it still dosen't acount for undoctored film or photography or group shared experiences in areas with no electric source in natural setting do your self a favor and go camping at the gettysburg battle field and take a lot of photos while your at it. the other stuff is pretty obvious but high and low you can tell this article is written by an up his own ass aethiest who has replaced his religion with the other religion of aithiesm and is so desperate to prove that nothing else beyond the ordinary exists that hell believe and half assed bulls**t theory that barely fits the question to prove to his own doubting subconcious that he made the right choice, and that hes superior to everbody else when hes obviosly just as gullible as the misguided fools who strap bombs to their chest or blow up abortion clinics, or condemed galileo as a heritic. all aethiest due is fool themselves like everybody else.
ReplyEver hear of a period or did you take Steve Martin seriously and think there was a shortage? Seriously, if you are going to drone on and on, it makes it much easier for the reader if you add some punctuation and create separate sentences.
You're the reason why I hate humanity. Because of people like you (zombie2093),I don't give other people a chance. Thanks for the cynicism.
and crops circles? police car cams have caught the phenominom in progress and it just raisises more questions the circles at least the real ones literally are created in the span of about 5 seconds ive seen 3 or 4 police vids some time theres is a couple of balls of light floating about freely above right before it happens but those balls are about the size of basket balls so can't even ba a craft of some sort.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesYou referring to the hoaxes on Youtube? Because they're, you know, hoaxes.
Especially to the comment above....
What about the weird radiation that we can't explain on SOME crop circles? (SOME are clearly faked.)
In these crop circles electronics fail and cell phones even lose all reception and freak out.
How is a hoaxer gonna hoax that?
++I'm not sure if this radiation was found on this crop circle, or much about it at all other than it existed at one time.
The crop circle depicting an alien 'grey' holding a disc with binary code on it. Google it and look at it yourself if you're interested...But that one has always been very strange to me.
For more information from Cracked on crop circles please see "5 Myths That People Don't Realize Are Admitted Hoaxes."
some more digging i think is needed before article is released, for ball lightning are they sugesting that there is big clumps of silica or quartz just floating in the atmosphere large enough to be seen from miles away when electrically charged?, and nazca line if sombody actually bothered to ask the native they would tell you that when under going shamen training students are put in a specific spot on the lines and given ayahuasca or payote or what ever vision inducing herb or mixture and are told to seperate themselves from their bodies and identify the image, when they can do so correctly they are considered fully trained, you see the problem with the conspirists is that they love to spout bulls**t, and the problem with the professionals is that they are incredibly lazy,and only due half the work that when you actually start asking ques about their theories or results you find them to be equally full of s**t don't trust either of them go find your own answers and seriously who ever wrote this article how the f**k is there giant f**kin balls of quartz floating in the air, i mean come on i think a pocket of free floating gas bubble maybe methane or some thing makes more sense then a ball of floating f**king sand.
Replyasl op?
No one said there were giant balls of silica and quartz floating in the air, if you read the article, it says the 'balls of lightning flew erratically around the lab' after going through the process described in the article.
Crop circles should definitely have been included.
ReplyAlready covered - "5 Myths That People Don't Realize Are Admitted Hoaxes."
*whimpers* the spider, the spider, make it go away!
ReplyFor the ones complaining that these guys didn't do their own research: Joe Nickell and others DID do the research. They went out and examined the purported mysteries and solved them. They wrote about what they did, and how they did it, who they contacted, and so on. And every time, they found explanations that did not require space aliens, warps in the space-time continuum, or any other woo-woo non-explanation.
ReplyMost mystery-mongers do little more than repeat other mystery-mongers (without even consulting primary sources). If they DO go anywhere, they're looking for confirmation of their belief that aliens, ghosts, time-travelers or whatever are involved.
The so-called explanations in this article are more ludicrous than some of the mysteries it claims to have solved.
All Hail Science! :D
ReplyDamn. I knew those scientists were Brazilian the moment I saw those rubber sandals.
ReplyThe Ghost Phenomena...as related to the part of the brain that only reacts to when people are talking or praying to any deity. These hallucinations...some people, as well as some scientists, believe this is just how the brain reacts to this outside stimuli. In otherwords there was a ghost in the experiment room! Its weird that scientists that don't believe in ghosts never think of simple things like neighboring dimensions or the fact that when things die their atoms that consist of "life" disappear somewhere....
Reply Hide All See All 5 Repliesmost of the other crap I always thought the same or already knew, they debunked the sliding stones years ago actually few people believe in them now. Ley lines and peoples modern idea of "Faeries" are both ruined by early writers. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ruined the real Fae image very badly...idiot was fooled by little girls and cutouts from books...
"simple things like neighboring dimensions or the fact that when things die their atoms that consist of "life" disappear somewhere..."
yeah, that sounds pretty simple, alright.
I remember when we discovered the "life atom" it was a great day for science.
Yeah! how could the scientist not have thought that a ghost was in the room!? He was obviously working in collaboration with the Jews and the Aliens.
There is no evidence that ghosts even exist, so why would we assume that they exist in an experiment completely unrelated to their potential existence.
Your comment's existence is an insult to science.
I'm not going to waste time explaining all the details, but you should probably be notified that you are in fact a moron who is unable to tell the difference between fantasy and reality.
Those other guys said things that I would have said, so yeah.
"I'm not going to waste time explaining all the details, but you should probably be notified that you are in fact a moron who is unable to tell the difference between fantasy and reality."
Perhaps when you get older, you'll understand how much you don't understand.
They've done this experiment more than once, more often than not ending in the same results. Claim 'coincidence' as much as you like, it's very unlikely that a ghost was in the room every single time.
Yeah, so for people wondering, "Klerksdorp" isn't just some random arbitrary name they decided on for the stones. It's actually the name of the town they were first found; Klerksdorp, South Africa.
ReplyOkay, I'm done now.
But where did they get the name for the town, hmmmm?
Space aliens.
You know, I've never wondered about HOW the Nazca lines were made. I mean, it's always been pretty obvious that some people dug them out. Big deal. What I want to know is WHY they did it. Seriously, that's a lot of effort, and all to make pictures they wouldn't ever be able to view properly. What were they trying to achieve? (Although, there is this little voice in the back of my head that goes "You've seen what people do when they get bored, and can you imagine how boring it must have been back then?")
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesI do love how Cracked writers tend to use my country as a threat. :D That's right, show some respect, or we'll turn the tables and start letting -our- animals run feral in -your- country.
Sacrifice to a God or God-King? That might sound silly, but it's at least kind of prevalent for people throughout history to do kind of zany things in the name of whatever they considered to be God. Sacrifices, pyramids for Kings, statues for Gods.
Maybe they were drawing pretty pictures for God to look at.
Yeah, right, "pretty" :P
If I'm correct (I may not be) part of the scientific bewilderment (huh, apparently I've been spelling that wrong for years) concerning the formation of the Nazca lines is this: they're in a mountainous region, and the "plains" on which they were carved were actually leveled by unknown means; formerly, they were mountaintops. Further, the enormous amount of earth which would have had to have been *put somewhere* after it was moved (during said leveling process) cannot be accounted for. It's an interesting thing to think about (if you're me, or a geologist) but I could just be spreading an internet myth myself, since after first hearing about it I've not gone to any considerable lengths to verify it personally.
The whole "pictures for God to look at" doesn't sound too far off, imho. Many cultures, including our own, have connected the sky with celestial beings.
I love seeing Australia referenced as the most dangerous country in the world countless times in cracked articles. It makes me feel like I'm badass just for surviving here for the 22 years since I was born.